City of the Sun (2 page)

Tad lumbers out of the panel van clutching a sixer of Blue Ribbon and the reload, the day’s second round of food. This time it is McDonald’s as directed. He approaches the house, the eyesore of the neighborhood. The paint is falling off in flakes and long curls, and only the windows on the side and those of the room down the hall are freshly painted. Black. It is what they’ll call their “music studio” if anyone asks. But no one does. This is the house the neighbors wish would just go away so property values could rise.

Tad enters, pulling off dark sunglasses and sliding them into the chest pocket of his flannel shirt. The living room is dingy. Carpet that is lentil in color and texture, and secondhand green and orange sofas that have gone decades without a recovering fill the room.

Fast-food sandwich boxes and wrappers litter a dinette area. Rooster sits on a spindly chair across from a dormant twenty-year-old color television with tinfoil bunny-ears antennae that rests on a milk crate. His eyes are on the dead screen and he rocks slightly in rhythm to music that seems to fill his head from an unknown source. He is shirtless.

“You are one lazy bastard.”

Rooster’s eyes don’t leave the television as he gives Tad the finger.

“You got no work ethic at all.”

“You speak to Riggi?” Rooster asks as if Tad has just entered the room and the previous comments had never occurred.

“Shiftless. Look at you.”

“I’ve already been in there two times since you been gone,” Rooster says. Flat. His eyes, also flat, turn to Tad, stopping him up. “You speak to Riggi?”

“Two times? Bullshit, two times …” Tad gets his breath back. “Yeah, I spoke to him.”

“What’d he say?”

Tad puts the beer down among the rubble on the dinette table. He opens one for himself and chucks one over to Rooster.

“Mr. Riggi said he needs it for Thursday.”

Rooster opens the new beer and takes a delicate, probing sip. “Thursday. Shit.”

“Yeah,” Tad begins, enjoying his partner’s discomfort, “he’s got it arranged for Thursday, so you better get cracking.”

“Yeah? I should get cracking? Whyn’t you take a turn?” This silences Tad for a moment.

“No thanks. You’re the pro.”

Rooster nods slightly, pleased, then kicks a pill into the back of his mouth, drains off a few ounces of his beer, and wearily stands. Vicodin. When you’re in physical pain, it takes away the pain. When you’re not in pain, it takes away other things. He gathers himself and walks purposefully down the hall toward the back bedroom door.

Tad occupies the chair in front of the television, leans forward, and turns on cartoons.

The sound of a lock being undone from the outside and the door opens, allowing a crease of light into the ugly, darkened bedroom. The blacked-out windows are nailed shut and have metal grating over them on the inside. A sheetless bed is the only furniture. Rooster reaches up and tightens a bare lightbulb into its fixture, illuminating the room. Balled up between the bed and the wall is a tearstained, violence-shocked flash of skin. The man’s face sets in a mask that expresses neither frenzy nor madness. The boy’s face forms its own mask of pain, and fear, and incomprehension, and so far below the surface as to be invisible, fury. He doesn’t even say no but weakly tries to scrabble away from the man.

“Here it comes,” Rooster says. He jerk-steps toward the boy and kicks the door shut.

Out in the living room Tad turns up the volume on the television.

Goddamnit. Where did he put the damned instruction manual for his BlackBerry
? Paul sifts through his paperwork-laden desk. The phones outside are busy. He’s been programming numbers into the thing for weeks, but now he can’t get it to work. His paneled office sports several framed certificates distinguishing him for his efforts as an insurance agent, but they aren’t helping him now.

Janine appears at the door. “Carol on three.” And she disappears again. He had called Carol on the way to work and told her to start looking for Jamie.

“Carol? My BlackBerry just crashed. Did he show up? ‘Cause when he does he has some explaining—” Her answer freezes him inside. It’s 10:15.

“The police? We can, but I don’t know. It seems a little drastic. …” His gaze goes distant. There’s a world full of possibilities out there. But he isn’t ready to accept them. Fathers may not want to know.

“If he doesn’t show up at his normal time after school …” He stops. His stomach has soured. Acid churns in it like he’s had six cups of coffee on no food.

“No, you’re right — I’ll come home and we’ll deal with it. … Okay. … Try not to worry.” But as he hangs up, that’s what he has begun to do.

Paul and Carol stand static amid the bureaucratic swirl of the busy police station. Things move slowly for them, incoherently, like a warped videotape caught up in the machine.

They stand and gesture with the beefy desk sergeant.

Later, they sit at the desk of a concerned-looking patrolman, filling out forms, giving him photographs.

Now, waiting, silent, on a wooden bench, Paul holds a dead cup of coffee in one hand and Carol’s cold palm in his other. Her features have begun to tighten — it’s not possible to see it yet — but she’s begun to desiccate and wither on the vine.

Finally. Finally, the concerned-looking patrolman shows them into Captain Pomeroy’s small, glass-walled office. Pomeroy, a soft, pillowy man with a prominent nose bone, sits behind his desk. His tie has a silver bar across it. A silver pen and pencil set rests in his shirt pocket. His hair is swept back with Vitalis, his face full of Aqua Velva, his mouth full of nicotine gum.

“Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel, I’ve looked over your paperwork here, and I just want to assure you that this office will do everything it can to assist you in locating your boy, ahh, James.”

“Jamie” comes through Carol’s clenched jaw.

“Jamie.” Pomeroy makes a note. “Thought it was short for—”

“No, that’s his name. It’s on his birth certificate.”

“But before we do, before we open this thing up wide, I just want to be sure that this is … That is, that your boy didn’t run off for a—”

“He’s missing. I know it. You hear about these things.”

“Ma’am, most mothers … Look, all I’m saying is to be sure. It’s just that boys are known to be boys.”

“What?” It comes out a hoarse croak, as if Paul hasn’t used his voice box for years.

“What I’m saying is, often in these types of situation, maybe he had a math test he didn’t want to show up for. Or he got a bad grade on that science project and didn’t want you to—”

“Not Jamie.”

“Mrs. Gabriel …” Pomeroy leans back and shifts his holstered automatic against his hip. He looks to Paul in muted demand.

“Honey, I’m sure that’s what everybody says about their …”

“Exactly,” Pomeroy breathes in gratitude, taking over from Paul. “Hell, he probably just …”

Hope is a slim branch, and the men do their best to grasp it, but it’s a bit overweighted for Carol. Her expression stops Pomeroy.

“I suggest you talk to his teachers.” He manages to start again. “See if everything was jake at school. Ask his friends …”

“Fine, we will, but …” Paul offers.

“Anything you do along those lines will save us legwork.” Pomeroy taps a silver pen against the edge of the desk.

“What are you going to do? What about issuing an alert?”

“We have. We’ve passed around the information. Okay, ma’am. We’ll open it up wide. We’ll set up on your house. Your place of business, too. I’ll put officers out in the neighborhood canvassing door to door. And I want you to call in the minute your son shows up” — Pomeroy leads them out of the glass-walled office—”because he’s going to.” Pomeroy smiles reassuringly. “He’s going to.” And he shuts the door behind them.

“That man is not going to help us.” Carol’s words come, grim. Paul says nothing.

Darkness comes early this time of year. The Buick drives up. After long hours of looking, of hanging flyers, Paul steps out of the car, the way he has so many times after picking Jamie up from soccer practice. Paul stands on the driver’s side. Carol, after an afternoon of waiting by the phone, appears in the front door. She shakes her head. In the setting sun, Paul is a handsome, still-young father. He appraises his home of comfort, his still-young wife before it. A police cruiser is parked at the curb. He walks toward the house and she crosses toward him. They come together and cling to each other in the driveway, neither sure what they’re holding on to now. The sun drops below the trees.

Paul eats a bleak dinner of cold cereal. Rigged to the phone is a trace/recording device monitored by the two patrolmen outside in their cruiser. Carol sits in a trancelike state next to him. A scratching is heard at the kitchen door. Carol gets up and lets Tater in. His mouth drips blood. She gets a dish towel and wipes him clean. He is uninjured — the blood belongs to something else — and he rumbles off into the living room, excited at the smell of the police sniffer dogs that have been through the house all afternoon. Paul shakes more Lucky Charms into his bowl and the prize falls out.

“He was waiting for this. I’ll save it for him.” He puts it aside on the table and breaks down, his shoulders shaking with sobs.

Carol stands across the kitchen. She doesn’t go to him. After some time he stops.

“Let’s just go up to bed.” He stands.
Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and find out this was all a bad dream
, he wants to say, but does not.

Paul crosses to the staircase. Carol goes to the wall and turns on the living room and porch lights.

“Let’s leave these on in case.” She follows him up the stairs.

The door swings open, throwing light onto the mattress, which the boy has pulled off the bed and angled against the wall over himself like a protective lean-to. Rooster offhandedly tosses a grease-soaked fast-food bag into the room and sniffs to himself at the attempted defense.
Never seen that one before. As if it’d work
. He slams the door behind him. Again the room is awash in darkness.

Paul lies on his back in the darkened bedroom, unfeeling of the mattress beneath him. He floats in space defined only by his misery. Grief that he could never have imagined surrounds him and tears at him from every direction. Circumstances pulverize him, sap him motionless in the dark. A dull rumbling sound filters in from the bathroom. There, sitting in a filling tub, Carol thinks of Jamie when he was a three-year-old playing the Down the Drain game, an amusement of his own invention.
Better get the plumber, Mommy, I’m gone. I’m down the drain
. … Carol’s pale back shakes. The water pounds and thunders. She realizes the sound isn’t the water but her screams.

Rooster and Tad sit at the cluttered dinette table. Heavy feedback music is in the air and Tad drums along to it.

“So’s he gonna be ready?”

Rooster looks at his partner. Tad’s recently started smoking meth, and he’s on it now. Rooster can tell because Tad has that filthy sheen. It’s a dirty drug that opens the pores and seems to suck in airborne dirt and debris. He must’ve smoked up the last time Rooster was in the room down the hall. Disgusting. “Of course he’s gonna be ready, bitch.”

“Because it’s first thing, like fucking dawn on Thursday, you know, asshole?”

Tad has a wild, risky look in his eyes.
Wouldn’t be there if not for the meth
, Rooster thinks.

“Yeah, I know, douche bag.” Rooster flicks a bottle cap at him. Just misses the fat fucker.

“Watch it.” Tad moves evasively and too late. “Just so you’re sure, dickhead.”

“I’m a professional, fuck face.” This taunt catches Tad, and he isn’t sure where to go next, how to escalate.

“Listen, faggot,” he begins, and then there’s a click and a knife blade’s at his throat. Rooster’s pulled the four-inch Spyderco he carries in his back pocket and locked it back. Just like that. Tad feels the pressure of the blade against his Adam’s apple, a hard thin line.

“Don’t even say another word. Not sorry, not spit. Hear me?” Rooster’s face radiates blood.

Tad Ford nods slowly.

Class has just ended at JFK Middle, and kids stream out toward buses and their parents’ cars. Carol Gabriel walks opposite the flow toward the low building and wonders why she’s done this to herself and not come later in the afternoon. It has been four days. The police have left her house. Every backpack she sees, every jacket, screams Jamie for a moment before dissolving into a different child. Alex Daugherty walks by her and stops.

“Hi, Mrs. G,” he says.

She bends down. “Alex. Hi, Alex.” The boy seems to know something’s going on but not exactly what. “You know that Jamie’s been away for a couple days?” she goes on. She can’t hold herself back from touching him. Her hands reach out and smooth the boy’s sleeves, his hair. Her hands, disconnected from her mind, need to know that
this
boy at least is real.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know if he was … upset? Was everything okay at school and stuff?”

“Yeah. Did he run away?” the boy wonders.

“We don’t think so.” The conversation is already taking a toll on Carol. “He wasn’t having any problems that he told you about? He hadn’t met anyone? Any secret stuff? Because you should tell me if he did, it’s important.”

Alex shakes his head and begins digging at the sidewalk with a toe, when a little way off at the curb his mother honks and gets out of her station wagon.

“There’s my mom.”

Carol straightens up and trades a glance with Kiki Daugherty, who waves. She’s told Kiki and Kiki’s said all the right things. Carol watches jealously as the other mother collects her child. If there’s any accusation in Kiki’s stare, any “What kind of a mother lets this happen to her son?,” she keeps it to herself so Carol can’t see it. Carol hurries toward the school.

Inside Jamie’s homeroom, his teacher, Andrea Preston, a twenty-seven-year-old black woman, hands Carol a cup of coffee.

“We have assemblies where we teach the children not to talk to strangers or accept rides. And we had one yesterday to redouble—”

“Yes. Yes.” Carol’s words echo, disembodied, against the linoleum. “Really, Jamie’s old enough to know all that. I just wanted to check again and see if everything was all right here. He was doing fine, wasn’t he?” There is panic in her voice now. Perhaps nothing was as she thought.